


Oh, Wash Away The Blood

by Kissed_by_Circe



Series: Copper And Crimson And Rust [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Also kind of, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Reincarnation, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-21 06:42:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16571603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kissed_by_Circe/pseuds/Kissed_by_Circe
Summary: The dreams are always the same. There’s fog dancing lazily around her, but it lifts after a few heartbeats, and then she’s able to make out her surroundings. She’s a disembodied ghost, and the situations she finds herself in remind her of costume dramas.Reincarnation AU set in real-world Europe, between the 15th and 21st century. 87,5% of the lives are sad, but there’s a happy end :D





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> English's not my native language, so please excuse any grammar/spelling mistakes I might've made :) not beta-read 
> 
> More information on the past lives of Sansa's at the end :)

The dreams start a few weeks before her 18th birthday.

 

At first, they are foggy, filled with shadows, red mist and hollow voices calling her name. There’s the feeling that she knows their meaning, lingering in the back of her head, the kind of feeling you get when you meet a stranger and _know_ that you know them, but can’t place them.

 

She always wakes up with a veil of crimson before her eyes, her surroundings tinted red, and her mother takes her to doctors and specialists to find out what’s wrong with her vision, but no one has answers. Sansa researches dreams and their meaning, but nothing comes of it.

 

And then, after months of nothing but red, the fogs start to rise and finally lift.

 

*******

 

When she enrolled in university, she chose fashion design as her major, and hopped that only seeing red in the mornings wouldn’t cause her too much trouble, and when the red fades, slowly but steadily over the course of the first semester, she almost doesn’t notice it at first. By the time she and Margaery and their friends go down to Mallorca for spring break, there’s only the palest shade of scarlet left.

 

It’s there, in a cobalt blue painted guestroom in Margaery’s uncle’s mansion, that she has her first clear dream. When she wakes up, the walls around her are still blue, but her head is filled with red, and she scrambles out of her bed, climbs onto the windowsill in her pyjamas with her sketchbook, and starts drawing the faces she saw.

 

*******

 

They aren’t always clear, she doesn’t remember everything, but she manages to fill half a dozen notepads and sketchbooks with them, with a hundred shades of red, just like their hair, their clothes, their deaths. When she gets tired of crimson and vermilion and amaranth, she starts writing the names, dates and stories down with green ink that seems to ooze into her life as well. Suddenly the curtains of her windows are made of honeydew cotton, her closet’s filled with jade and mint and emerald green, and she only uses a malachite text marker for her notes.

 

*******

 

The dreams are always the same. There’s fog dancing lazily around her, but it lifts after a few heartbeats, and then she’s able to make out her surroundings.

 

She’s a disembodied ghost, and the situations she finds herself in remind her of costume dramas. Castles and gardens and towns and battlefields, and usually people in historic clothing like soldiers and peasants and nobles. There are a dozen different worlds, but two people are always the same, a woman that looks exactly like her – sometimes older than her, sometimes a bit younger – and a handsome man with dark curls and grey eyes.

 

The first life she saw was sad, but not too much. The woman that looked like her wore a beautiful burgundy Victorian dress and walked through London with a hatbox, when she met the dark-haired man. He called her Sansa and grabbed her hand, told her that he’d been forced to leave her and that he loved her still. The sadness on their face when she said “I’m so sorry, Jon, but I’m Lady Tarly now. I cannot stay, my- my husband expects me.” haunted her for days.

 

She dreams about that woman from time to time – she’s a lady-in-waiting to queen Victoria and fell in love with Jon Snow, but he had to flee to the continent after a duel, and so she married Lord Harlon Tarly. Lady Sansa Tarly’s children are adorable, her husband loves her dearly, and she likes dreaming about her, and waking up with a smile on her face because she spent the whole night playing with little Rylene, Alan and Florys in the 19th century.

 

It’s better than dreaming about the others.

 

The ones about executions are the worst, because they’re the ones where she can see the fear on her own face. Mistress Sansa prays with a stoic face while the flames curl around her and the crowd around the stake calls her a heretic and a witch, and Jon Snow’s there, too, yelling her name and fighting against the guards holding him back. She’s a protestant and kind of a martyr, just like Mademoiselle Stark, who works for the Comet line and is shot by the Germans only weeks before the end of WWII.

 

The Duchesse’s death is just as brutal, but it’s not the drive through Paris with revolutionists throwing dirt at her or the moment she lays her head on the block that makes her sob uncontrollably, but the way she grabs Jon’s hands – he used to be their sable boy, now he’s a revolutionist, and he only found out about her execution when she’s already climbing up the steps to the scaffold, but she clings to him with tears streaming down her face, allowing the mask of ice she’s wearing to slip for a moment, when she begs him to take care of her daughter Alicent and bring her to her brother’s family in the Highlands.

 

Nurse Stark, who falls in love with Captain Snow in a field hospital, is hit by a shell and dies in the trenches, her blood staining her uniform until the cross stitched on the white fabric disappears. It’s horrible, but faster and more merciful than the fate of the young seamstress simply named Sansa Stark, marries her Jon, only to die of the plague a few months later. At least that one got a few months of happiness, unlike pirate Captain Stark, who allowed a naval officer with dark curly hair to kill her.

 

But the biggest influence on her life has Lady Snow, who waits on Elizabeth I and spends a few blissful years with her husband, before she bleeds to death in the birthing bed, and who wakes her interest in history – or, rather, historical clothes – and who is the reason why she watches the Cate Blanchett movies.

 

A year and two months after her first red dream, she decides to attend some history classes, because she wants to become a costume designer specialising on historical dramas – and because a head filled with rugged pirate captains and elegant ladies can have an impact on someone’s interests – but it’s only when her professor mentions a lady-in-waiting of Marie Antoinette called Sansa Tyrell that she starts researching the people she sees in her dreams.

 

There are diaries and official documents, paintings that look like her – some of them show her as an older version of herself, some with wrinkles and grey hairs, some with scars on their faces, but they look exactly like her, down to the mole on her temple which the Duchesse de Hautjardin covered with a fake beauty spot – and there’s even a blog about time travellers, immortals and conspiracy theories that put said paintings and a sepia photo of Nurse Stark in a collage titled ‘Sansa Stark, the Red Ghost Lady’ next to Keanu _fucking_ Reeves.

 

*******

 

If all the past Sansas, who are all related to her in some way, are _real_ , then so must be the other people from her dreams, she thinks, these people who are like family to her, to whom she feels a connection as deeply as to her sister Arry or her brothers. Sometimes she sees herself as these women, remembers situations from days long gone, and catches herself thinking of the people from her dreams as if they were really there, as if the other Sansas’ children were _her_ children. Maybe reincarnation _is_ real, maybe these are her past selves. The only thing she knows for sure is that they are a part of her, that their families are important to her. And so, she researches them as well.

 

Alicent Tyrell is the first she finds on Wikipedia – right after Sansa Tyrell, thanks to a hyperlink – and when she looks at a painting that depicts a beautiful young woman with curly brown hair and bright blue eyes and reads the short text about the favourite maid-of-honour of Marie Thérèse of France, her escape to Scotland and her long and happy life after the restauration, she cries.

 

There’s not much about the Tarly children, but her great-great-great-grand-aunt lived long enough to see them grow into wonderful adults, dance at their weddings and rock her own grandchildren on her knees, so she doesn’t need to find tiny snippets of information to know that they were happy and safe. Her little Jeyne, the girl she died bringing into the world, was dark-eyed and sharp, according to the biographers that mention her, and she managed to survive among the vipers of the court of Elizabeth I.

 

*******

 

The last person on her list is Jon Snow, not because she’s not interested in him –  she really is, because he’s a constant in her dreams, because their relationships are so different from dream to dream, with him literally killing her in some lives and being her lover or even her husband in others, because she has _feelings_ from him and might even love him as much as one can love a person they’ve never met in real life, a person that could be a product of her imagination and nothing more, but _still_ – but because she’s afraid of what she’ll discover.

 

It’s not much, she finds out after ~~two~~ three glasses of red wine on her couch after a long day, when she types his name into the google search bar, her fingers flying over the keyboard much faster than they should, but her roommates aren’t home and she doesn’t want to pretend that she wasn’t so close to doing this for _months_.

 

The results are king of disappointing, because there’s not really much about him. There is a Wikipedia site about the injured pilot she met in Belgium during WWII and worked with when he became an agent for the MI6, and some articles about the French revolutionist and how he helped Alicent Tyrell escape to England, but that’s all. Nothing more, nothing less, safe for a Facebook profile whose profile pic is a grainy photograph of a fluffy white dog, and so she guesses that she’ll never know what became of all the Jons from her dreams.


	2. ii

There’s nothing worse than Margaery Tyrell’s parties, at least according to him. Aegon, however, loves them, almost as much as he loves Margaery herself, plus he needed a wingman that won’t hook up with all the pretty girls, and so here he is. Jon Snow, the dark, brooding kind of guy, a geek and a history nerd on top of that, and, according to his brother, also not particularly handsome or attractive, in the middle of a house party that could have also been a Victoria’s Secret commercial, complete with fluffy pink fabrics covering _everything_ , including the walls, and girls running around in flimsy dresses that could also be some sort of lingerie, he thinks.

 

He’s already thinking about sneaking out the back door and hiding in the colourless shadows that fill the garden behind the Tyrell’s mansion, when he spots a sliver of auburn silk, the very same shade that tints his dreams a dark, rich red-brown, and he freezes on the spot before he panics, and dives behind a pink velvet couch. It’s _her_ , the girl ~~of his dreams~~ that he dreams of almost every night.

 

He’s seen her around campus, not too often, maybe a dozen times over the course of the last four years, but her face is etched into his brain, every single detail, down to the mole on her temple and the birthmark on the inside of her thigh, even the way her voice breaks when she tries to sing the higher notes and that she crunches her nose when she laughs and how she doesn’t walk, but waltzes around, all things he cannot, _should not_ know. It’s creepy, he knows, and he has no idea why he knows all this or how his dreams work.

 

It’s creepy that Margaery “introduced” them to each other when he ran into them during spring break four years ago, when Sansa just looked at him with polite disinterest before turning back to her other friends, and that he didn’t dream of red fog the following night, but of _her_ wearing a WWI nurse uniform and taking it of in an empty tent behind the trenches. If there’s something out there that’s creepier than having a wet dream about a girl he just met wearing _fucking_ vintage underwear that looks like it could’ve belonged to his grandmother and having sex with a guy that looks exactly like him, he’ll bite his own ass.

 

The other dreams usually aren’t as smutty as the first one – he dreams of rather sweet moments as if he stumbled into a movie set, of a man that looks like him lying next to her in bed with his hand pressed to her swollen belly where he can feel their child move, of dancing with her in candlelit ballrooms and of catching her when she falls out of an apple tree in an impractical gown with too many ribbons on it. And he dreams of her dying in his arms, fading away under his fingers while her blood soaks earth and mud and sand, crimson and scarlet and carmine.

 

The colours follow him into his waking hours, and he tries to drown them in the coolest and darkest shades of blue he can find – periwinkle sheets and steel blue wallpapers in his dorm room, cerulean notebooks filled with sapphire ink, even an ugly teal case for his phone – but it’s always there. He sees her dying, again and again, there’s nothing he can do, and his heart breaks a little, because he, as stupid as it sounds, finds himself falling for the girl he meets every night. He loves the duchess with her icy armour, the pirate with the softest heart hidden behind too many scars and the way the comet-line-agent takes her fear and turns it into courage.

 

And now she’s here, too, wearing a light green slip dress that makes her hair shine even brighter, looking as radiant as she always does, both in reality and in his dreams, and he‘s hiding behind a sofa because he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself or, worse, say something creepy or awkward that’ll make her feel uncomfortable.

 

No, it’s better to just hide here a little longer, and hope that Aegon won’t find him – but he does, of course, find him, only moments later. “Why’re you crouchin down behind a chaise longue, bro? Did you lose your contacts again?” Instead of an answer, Jon just grabs his older brother’s arm and pulls him down, out of Sansa’s sight. Aegon struggles, but squads down, too, and nods in understanding once Jon hisses “No, there’s a girl that shouldn’t see me right now over there.” “One that friend zoned you? Val, or Aly Karstark?” “Fuck off, asshat. Val and Aly did _not_ friend zone me, because we’re real friends. And no, it’s neither of them.”

 

His brother wants to say something, probably with at least two four-letter-words, but he’s interrupted by someone clearing their throat right over them. When Jon looks up and sees a pair of eyes like the sea on a cold and windy day, light blue with silvery streaks surrounding the irises like halos, he wants to die. Sansa Stark, the girl of his dreams, is starring down at him.

 

*******

 

He’s real. The man of her dreams is real, crouching down behind a powder pink Recamier, with a blush rising to his cheeks, his specs askew on his long nose and almost bumping heads with the very handsome, silver haired guy that Margaery’s dating right now. Maybe this isn’t supposed to happen, maybe the universe doesn’t want them to be together, at least judging from her dreams which could be, as she realised two minutes ago when she saw him, be memories of her, of _their_ past lives. Maybe soulmates exist. Maybe _they_ are soulmates. Maybe they’re meant to be together, maybe they’re not.

 

But- 

 _Fuck the universe_. 

 

This could be her chance for happiness. This could be the love of her life, a thing she didn’t believe in anymore after Joffrey and Harry and Petyr. And even if he’s no longer the same, if he’s not the man she fell in love with, if they’re not meant to be together, then she’ll at least get some answers, if he also has these weird dreams that make her limbs twitch as if she wanted to run, her fingers itch for pens and paper, her lips curl around words she wants to shout.

 

 _I’ve died a thousand times and I’ve lived a thousand times more_ , she tells herself. Her past selves were all so very brave, fighting in wars and refusing to give them a show when they were executed, so talking to some guy at a house party shouldn’t be too difficult.

 

*******

 

“I’m Sansa.” “I- I know. I meant, we met, once- on Mallorca. Some years ago. I’m Jon.”, he says, and hates himself for stuttering. It’s not like this gorgeous woman’s even interested in a guy like him, so there’s no reason for him to be nervous, but he still is. His knees go weak when her smile broadens, and she answers, “Oh, really? I don’t really remember, but most of that holiday’s just a blur of alcohol, brownies and the worst sunburns I’ve ever had.”, and smiles some more.

 

When he doesn’t say anything at that, and the silence between them grows awkward, she asks him about his field of study, they talk about their courses, because they’re both studying history in some way or the other. And then she asks him if he’d like to have coffee with her sometime, and his eyes almost fall out of his head. And then they fall in love with each other for the first and the thousandth time.

 

*******

 

They confess their dreams to each other a few weeks into their relationship, discover that they’re the same, and come to the conclusion that they could be soulmates or something like that. Maybe the universe is against them, he says, because their past selves barely found happiness with each other, because they all died violently before their time. Maybe they’ll die now that they’re in a relationship, now that they’ve met each other.

 

It doesn’t stop them from loving each other.

 

*******

 

 _ ~~Spoiler:~~_ _They’re going to get married, and have children, and grandchildren, and grow old together. They die, after half a century together and only moments apart, with smiles on their lips and their_ _fingers intervened._

 

They are not born again after that.

**Author's Note:**

> This is WAY TOO MUCH, but I love history and just had to make up some former lives for Sansa XD  
> Mistress Sansa Stark (1524-1556), protestant, writer and translator, daughter of Eddard Stark, Lord High Chancellor of England, burned at the stake for heresy 
> 
> Lady Sansa Snow (1556-1579), lady-in-waiting of Elizabeth I, wife of Lord Jon Snow, mother of Jeyne Snow (*1579), died in childbirth 
> 
> Sansa Snow (1649-1666), seamstress, wife of Jon Snow, died of the plague 
> 
> Captain Sansa Stark (1666-1700), pirate captain, died in a duel 
> 
> Sansa Tyrell, Duchesse de Hautjardin (1767-1794), aristocrat, wife of Alester Tyrell and mother of Alicent Tyrell (*1786), executed during the French Revolution 
> 
> Lady Sansa Tarly (1823-1895), lady-in-waiting of Victoria I, wife of Harlon Tarly and mother of Rylene (*1844), Alan (*1846) and Florys (*1857) 
> 
> Nurse Sansa Stark (1895-1916), combat nurse, killed in action 
> 
> Sansa Stark (1916-1945), Belgian resistance fighter in WWII, executed by the Nazis


End file.
